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View Full Version : Political Machinations- big fun or a big waste of time?



Maho-Tsukai
2010-12-14, 12:57 PM
My playgroup, simply put, loves politics. We all like to dicsuss real world politics and a number of us are looking to one day ruyn for public office. We also like discussing historical and modern warfare abd battle tatics and some of us also are looking to join the millitary. Thus, when we get on our skypes (Sadly we are seperated by distance, but plan on meeting one day.) to play a new campaign we almost always, somehow, end up getting our characters involved in the politics of whatever game world we may be in. Simply put, our characters are almost never the rag tag adventurers born as pesant farmers who go dungon delving to save the world from evil and become something big along the way. Rather, depending on what level the game starts, our characters are almost always working for some big political player(s) in the game world or are in fact themselves those political players. Our characters spend as much time manuvering through royal courts and council chambers, dodgeing the attempts of political rivals to besmerch their reputations as they do manuvering through dungons dodging the cleric's holy word spell. We also many times bring mass combat into higher level games and our characters do many times wind up controling large armies. In fact, mass combat is usually what replaces the typical "big boss fight" most D&D games have. Instead of the party storming the BBGG's(Big Bad GOOD guy, as we usually play as evil) lair and fighting him ourselves the "final battle" is often first waged as a battle of armies and then if the BBGG is still alive after then the "final boss fight" finally happens.

Now I know that political campaigns are not something that everybody enjoys but I want to know the playground's opinions on D&D games with political and millitary themes. Featuring court intrigue, political machinations, mass combat/army commanding and anything else which would fall under the "political" or "millitary" umbrellas.

So, dose you like to have some politics in your D&D or do you just want to kill the dragon, take his gold, save the hot elven princess and be a big **** hero who's too awesome to get involved with world politics and commanding armies?

Incanur
2010-12-14, 01:07 PM
I'm a fan. My campaigns always include a fair amount of intrigue. Actual dungeon crawls are rather rare.

Comet
2010-12-14, 01:17 PM
Good fun, for sure.
Just make sure that every player is okay with such a game and that they all have characters with strong motivation and some unique way of affecting the political landscape. Dungeoncrawling is the easy way out, running a game of intrigue where everyone gets to contribute in a meaningful way is considerably harder!

edit: I just saw that this was for D&D, specifically. In that case, here's another reason to play games with a heavy dose of talking heads: it allows you to avoid using the rules and rolling yet another damn D20, which is often very refreshing, at least for me.

Come to think of it, here's a story of how intrigue makes everything better:
There was one game of 3.5 that I had, originally, designed as a sort of street-level detective story/generic beat the rotten mayor up sort of romp. Right at the very first battle I was already feeling bored to tears with the combat mechanics of 3.5, as well as the storyline I had created. It was all just so by-the-book, and I think my players sensed it too.

So, at the first opportunity, I let the players take over a shop for their own. Then another. Then a district. Then a section of the city. Then half of the city. Then the Magic-users' Guild and the slum of powerful undead that were trying to live peaceful lives after dying in a war once. Eventually the whole thing escalated into massive guild war of the PC faction versus everyone else and the players ended up setting the entire city in magical fire while they themselves sailed away with a king's ransom in gold and diamonds.

What had initially been a basic, unimaginative mystery story turned into an almost freeform sandbox game of intrigue and commerce that culminated in a bittersweet victory and a massive explosion to boot. Six hours well spent, and all of it off the rails.

All in all, I find that players have the most fun when they sense that the GM is just BSing stuff up in reaction to their shenanigans. Rails are fun every now and then, but its the small moments of freedom in between that really make the world come alive.

Psyx
2010-12-14, 01:25 PM
I love playing and running political games. Just not in conjunction with D&D. There are some games out there really geared towards politics [l5r for example] and I tend to much prefer using those.

Dr Bwaa
2010-12-14, 01:25 PM
Sounds like you've got a great group for it, which is honestly all that matters. Personally I love games like that (though games comprised entirely of yelling and smashing are great fun, too :smallbiggrin:). Even in my group's least political games, if we get to a high enough level politics usually get involved (generally because someone takes over a country or two/gets married to the queen/whatever).

EDIT: @^ I also love me some freeform political games (set in fantasy worlds for fun++), to be sure. Good stuff.

Eldonauran
2010-12-14, 02:02 PM
Politics do play a role in any game I run past level 10 or so, maybe earlier depending on the players. We don't get heavy into the politics, since there are ways (read: magic) of avoiding the 'song and dance' that always happens in politics. I usually discourage players from finding ways to mess with the system and exploit it.

Personally, I don't like politics when I am a player but I do realise there is some necessity to them at certain points.

Maho-Tsukai
2010-12-14, 02:29 PM
Yeah, it also depends on the int and charisma of the characters in question. A barbaring with low int and low cha is not going to be all that great with politics. His method of "ruleing a nation" would more or less threatening to smash people to make them listen. However, that dose not mean our games have no room for low int, low cha characters. We still do have combat in our games, and said combat, since there is less of it, is usually FAR more challanging then normal. We also have a little houserule that makes things even more dangerous. We don't use NPC classes, ever. So those guards and melee flunkies of the king we are trying to dethrone are not warriors. No, the all have levels in TOB classes. The scheming court mages and town arcanists? They all have wizard or sorc levels, no adapts here. The village craftsman? He's an artificer, not an expert. Meet a priest? You can bet your life he's a cleric or favored soul. Thus since even guards and such have one or more levels in a PC class and no levels in NPC classes it makes enemies all the more dangerous and combat all the more difficult. I mean, failing to slip past a few guards whoes only classes are Warrior is no big deal. However, if the same guards happen to be Warblades or Crusaders it's far more dangerous for the PCs.

We don't even use the commoner class. Since commoners are usually so week and never really play any kind of roll in our games we don't bother stating them at all. I mean, when your goal is to take over the empire through manipulation and power-plays the base attack bonus of the all the peasents in the town you stop at to get supplies really dosen't matter. The only NPCs who get any kind of stats at all are either monsters, important characters or anybody who could potentinally could end up fighting the PCs(guards, solders ect...), and all of them use PC classes.

But yeah...while low int characters do have some trouble with the political aspect when it comes time to smash some face in they get their time to shine. As for low cha characters, they can do politics just fine. They may not have the social skills of the characters with better cha but most of the time said characters also are spellcasters. Thus while the ecentric low cha wizard may not be able to lie to the king to advance himself he dose not need to He simply just dominates him and acts as the shadowy power behind the throne. Or he animates and undead horde(Or summons some powerful monsters or outsiders to do the job if he's not necromanticly inclined.) that gose around disrupting and sexing control of trade routes and ports, destroying the economy of a city or nation until they give into his demands. Or he uses Magic Jar on whatever ruler is in power. Or he dose one of 5,000 + other things a wizard could do to exert power over a kingdom or nation. Charisma can certainly help, but you don't need to manipulate people to manipulate a nation. Manipulating events and econimics works just fine and you don't need good social skills to disrupt a nation's economey or dominate a leader or do something else like that.